This blog covers the entire history of Cullen and similar surnames, but I am especially interested in living Cullen families and the Cullen Family DNA project. Posts about the I-P37.2 Y-chromosome haplogroup have been moved to http://I2aProject.blogspot.com Contact me at berniecullen@gmail.com

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Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Distribution of Cullens in Scotland

A very large percentage of people named Cullen all over the world go back to Cullens from Ireland. But we know there are native English and Scottish families as well. The situation is confused because many Irish Cullens emigrated to England and Scotland over the last 200 years, and some Cullen descendants may not know where their family was originally from.

To investigate this, I searched the 1841 and 1881 Scotland censuses trying to identify established Cullen families. I defined these as households where the male head of the family was born in the same county and parish where he resided at the time of the census. I chose the 1881 census because the National Trust Names website provides a map of the surname for that year, click here

Here are some of my findings:

--because the industrial revolution was strong in Scotland, many people had moved away from their birthplaces even in 1841--In 1841 there were some Irish Cullen families mainly in the Glasgow area, but by 1881 the number of Irish-background Cullens in Scotland was roughly equal to the number of Scottish-background Cullens--There is only one name occurring in any quantity that is similar to Cullen and which could possibly be confused with Cullen--Collin and Collins. All other variants and spellings (Collen, Cullin, Cullins, McCullen, Collinge, Cullane and many others) were very rare in Scotland in 1881.

--there are only 3 general areas where I found long established Cullen families:1. The first area is up the Clyde valley from Glasgow (Lanarkshire). By far the largest number was in the area called the Monklands, including the towns of Airdrie and Coatbridge. Although this area was industrialized, Cullens had a variety of occupations including farming, many trades, merchanting, indicating a long presence. There also were a small number of farming Cullen families in south Lanarkshire, near the towns of Carstairs and Carluke Glasgow itself had several established Cullen families, although not as many established families as the Monklands.2. The second area has just a few Cullen families. This is Aberdeenshire in the northeast. There were a couple Cullen farmers in Strathdon which is is in the highlands west of Aberdeen, and also in Keig about halfway to Strathdon. Then there were 5 Cullen families living in the Buchan region a few miles inland from Peterhead, in the towns/parishes of Longside, New Deer, Old Deer.3. In 1841 there were a very few established Cullen families in the Central Belt in what was then called Stirlingshire and Perthshire, roughly around Falkirk and Sterling (specifically Falkirk, Deanston, Drip Moss and Doune). By 1881 the native Cullen presence was much reduced and less connected to the land.

That's it! In 1881 in all of Scotland I could only identify 75ish families where the Cullen male head of household was still living in the same civil parish where he was born. For comparison, there were 79 heads of household (male and female) named Cullen who were born in Ireland.

Of course there were many more Scottish origin Cullen families in addition to these75. You can tell by their birthplace that they were born in Scotland, and they often had Scottish given names (Alexander, Adam, Archibald Gavin etc.) But they were not living in their home parish.

Maybe I have omitted some important families? Please reply with any additions or corrections.

Here's a summary of the 75 families in 1881 and their location:

Aberdeenshire (7)--5 in Buchan (Longside, New Deer, Old Deer), 2 in Strathdon

12 comments:

Anonymous
said...

After reading this post, I was interested in investigating the Cullen distribution in the US. Using trajectory.com, I found that most of the American Cullens are in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New York...strange (almost random?) distribution. Here's what I found:

Thanks for the hint about trajectory,com I didn't know about that site and it looks very useful.

About the "random" distribution of Cullens--most Cullens probably came to this country before 1900 so they've had a lot of time to spread out. Many of the Irish immigrants came to cities and so weren't tied to the land as more rural surnames might be.

Still your results were interesting. Here's a couple obervations:--Cullen is used as a first name, especially in the south--there were a couple famous Cullen people in Texas: Ezekiel Cullen and his grandson I believe, the oilman Hugh Roy Cullen. There are many streets and schools named after the two of them, especially in Houston, and I think the search is picking up many of these.

I just did a quick search in the 1930 census and heres what I found (only looked at these 5 states):Cullen US total 12,127NY 2,575MA 1,256IL 912TX 202FL 53

What is your connection to the Cullen family Sandy? You can email me directly if you like.

Just got a email saying you had posted...Do you know if your Cullens were Scottish or English or Irish?I think probably more than half of the Cullens in Scotland could trace their Cullen line back to Ireland.

Hi,I am searching to see if my grandmother, Annie Cullen, formerly of Motherwell, Scotland, can be traced back to Irish roots.

She came to Canada around 1912(?), married a Robertson and had three children, Jack (John?), Bette and Margaret and lived in Toronto.

Annie came from a big family. Among them, I remember siblings William, Robert, Archibald, Gertrude, Cissie, Margaret and Jennifer.

I am sorry to know so little. The possibility of an Irish connection has implications for me in that I might be eligible to immigrate or at least work in Ireland if I can prove a direct ancestor. Any suggestions?

From what you write I would guess that Annie Cullen had long-term roots in Scotland. She was from Motherwell, which is one of the places I list with established Scottish Cullen families in the 1881 census. Archibald certainly sounds like a Scottish name to me. Do you know the religious affiliation of this family? In Ireland, Protestant Cullens were quite uncommon, and I would expect emigrants from Ireland to Scotland would not change their affiliation quickly.

It's certainly possible that Annie had an Irish father and a Scottish mother or vice versa. You should be able to find this family in the 1901 census, which is available online for a fee at ancestry.com and probably other places.

Do you know how old Annie was in 1912? Do you know where she was born?

If anyone is still monitoring this thread...my dad James Kelso Cullen was born in Renton, Scotland in 1923 (?). His mother was Margaret and his father was Martin Newberry Cullen...He was a steamship engineer and moved his family to Brooklyn, NY and then to New Jersey. I am visiting Scotland this week and curious to learn more about my family's history. Any info would be most appreciated. Much thanks, James Cullen jkc96@aol.com

Hi James, unfortunately I don't know much about Cullens in Scotland but if you find anything out please let us know, we can post some of your discoveries here if you want. Have you seen this query page: http://members.bex.net/jtcullen515/PostScot.htm

Have a great visit, and if you would consider doing a DNA test for genealogy please let me know, it sounds like your Cullens may have been Scottish originally (instead of 19th century immigrants from Ireland).

And Mags please send me an email if you like, and if in the future people would like to contact you, I will pass their information on to you.

Thank you all for posting here. As Bernie posted, there were several of the Cullen surname that came through the Northeast ports of North America. My family heritage derives from one.We thought for certain that our family came from Ireland until at age 93 my grandfather expressed that we actually originated from Baniff shire Scotland. Some day I would like to learn for certain.Until then, this is what we have thus far...http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ussnei/DennisCullen.htmMy grandfather was Ambrose.Hope this helps anyone out there.Cheers! -Steve

We have family history back to before 1000AD and our family, Cullings, is a derivative of the Cullens of Dunblane, Scotland and earlier, Ireland. There is an old family bible with several children from one family in the 1700's who all had different last names, all derivatives of and also including Cullen from Cullin to Culling, to Cullings. Makes tracking all that much harder.